


Desire Paths

by Magellanic_Clouds



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Aftercare, Amnesia, Bathing/Washing, Bird/Human Hybrids, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epilogue, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Julian Devorak Route - Reversed Ending, Magic, Memory Loss, Moderately Paced Burn, NSFW, Other, Plot With Porn, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Prophetic Dreams, Retrograde Amnesia, Revenge, Romance, Sexual Content, Soulmates, Torture, Trippy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-01-25 07:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21352759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magellanic_Clouds/pseuds/Magellanic_Clouds
Summary: An epilogue/post-canon AU which follows Dr. Julian Devorak and fan!apprentice Kore-Sídhe after the reversed route ending. After choosing to remain at The Hanged Raven to care for Julian, Kore-Sidhe is plagued by strange visions which will bring the two lovers closer, but lead them down yet another winding road of mystery and horror.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Apprentice/Julian Devorak/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	1. Prologue

“Heed these words, you who wish to probe the depths of nature; if you do not find within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it outside. In you is hidden the treasure of treasures...” -Oracle at Delphi

~*~

Walking endlessly gave Kore-Sidhe a lot of time to think. A lot of time to think about where she’d been going before all this,and where she was heading now. All the endless things she’s done wrong since the beginning, three years ago, and all the things she couldn’t remember from her life before that. It didn’t quite matter to her that she didn’t remember it, because it all led here, after all. All the things she had broken and all the people she had inevitably hurt brought her to this place. All the triumphs, too, brought her to the road. One step. Two steps. Forty two billion steps. She would get there; there was no choice.

The first task was to find him, she tells herself with ankles creaking, the soles of her feet aflame with pain. The ache inched further up her legs every step she took. One foot in front of the other. _Look at your feet, look at the path, don’t stare into the abyss or it’ll stare back..._  
The false moon she had passed; the blue moss--blue specifically--she had passed, and now she stood before a door. How many doors had she gone through already? How many more awaited?  
With her deflated bag at her side and Asra’s tarot deck clutched in Scout’s paws, Kore-Sidhe bids the spirit goodbye.

“Thank you, friend.” She says to Scout and pats her on the head affectionately. Scout doesn’t answer and instead fixes the woman with an ambivalent stare. Malak, sitting on Kore-Sidhe’s left shoulder, rustles his feathers impatiently. Above them a single other bird is flying. Kore-Sidhe had seen it miles away, a tiny pinprick diving and soaring above the Hanged Raven. It was still there, too small for her to make out.

Scout hadn’t wanted to bring Kore-Sidhe here at all. She didn’t want Kore-Sidhe finding Julian, that much was plain. Scout had been reluctant, but she had guided Kore all the same. It was all that mattered. Kore-Sidhe remembers the Quaestor’s voice at the red banquet, dripping venom: Would you even recognize him…?

Kore-Sidhe scoffs. As if she was some feckless human, sick in her heart and in her mind. If she were being honest, she knew she was. Sick in the heart and the head, that is. This mattered little; this was just another time she had proven them wrong. The Quaestor Valdemar might never know it; she prayed they would never know it, else this delicate card castle would come tumbling down around her feet. A personal victory was the sweetest kind. The kind where nobody knew of the victory at all, where it could be savored privately. For now... She shoves the door open and Malak squawks, takes flight, perches on a barstool. The resemblance between bird and bird-man is uncanny. Kore-Sidhe smiles.

~*~

“You’re still here.” Julian says quietly. Kore-Sidhe had spent…well she couldn’t remember how long she had spent quietly kissing his tears away. She had no inkling of an idea.  
They had talked and talked. Kissed, kissed again, and again. The pile of empty tankards resembles a mountain beside Julian’s preferred table, the one near the door. Glass crunched beneath her boot heels as she entered. She would have to remedy that later.

“And I’ve no intention of going anywhere, before you say aught else.” Kore-Sídhe’s voice is cold steel but her gaze is warm. Julian, crouched in the corner as he’d been for who knew how long, has nothing to say to that.

“I would like to remind you of some things, before you decide to force me out.”

“You promised me, Kore-Sídhe. You promised me you’d keep going.” Julian takes a deep breath, shuddering. His feathers rustle and he can’t bring himself to open his eyes after that, such is the look of revulsion etched on his face. Kore-Sídhe reaches and takes his hand in both of hers.

“I did. I kept my promise to you, and I kept going. You asked me to live. So here I am, very much....alive.” Her voice is barely a whisper, but the iron tone is enough. He opens his eyes to see her, the corner of her mouth turned up just barely into a ghost of a smile.

“I also promised that I would find you. You must have heard me; I was practically yelling.”

“I didn’t hear that part.”

“I swore. To you, and to myself, and to Him.” She’s so close to Julian he could almost inch forward to kiss her again. Anxiety pins him in place, head swimming, stomach roiling with fear. If The Devil knew she was here, it was only a matter of time. Time: a thing Julian could no longer measure with any semblance of certainty. Thralls wearing her face were not the last of what the Devil would send to torment him, he was sure; Julian hoped to hell and back that what he said about the Devil not caring about him any longer rang true. He knew it wasn’t. He swallows and resurfaces to her voice again.

“I forgive you. I will always.” Kore-Sidhe says. “I told you that once before. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say then, but it isn’t now. I love you, so here I am.”

“How could you?” Julian’s voice is choked; a croak escapes his throat. He claps his hand over his mouth.  
Bird noises. He was making bird noises. He prayed to whatever god or Arcana was listening that the ground would split open and swallow him whole.

“Because you’re you.”

Julian nods, his grip on her hand now vicelike, a fresh crop of tears adorning his face.

“Because I love you. If you believe nothing else, believe that.” Kore-Sidhe’s smile reaches her eyes, this time. “Are you absolutely positive you won’t--”

“No. No way. I won’t let you break the chains. I can't possibly ever let you do that, Kore-Sidhe!”

“I can do it, though. I did it once already, if you recall.”

“No!" He shakes his head vehemently.

She kisses his hand, rough and scaly. Perhaps another time....

His skin is cool on her lips. She won’t press the issue. He’s right, in a sense; the unbinding could bring the Devil right to this doorstep. The severing of that bond would make Kore-Sidhe vulnerable again and it would surely summon Him, if she shattered those chains. She could only see them from the corner of her eye, and only sometimes. Pressed up against Julian’s feathers, she could barely feel the metal. Was it metal? But she knew Julian felt their weight; she knew he could see them all the time. Every day and night, they were a heavy reminder of sacrifice. She wondered if it was the same for Quaestor Valdemar, for the consul and the pontifex, all of whom she loathed. If it was the same for every thrall of His. She wouldn’t become a thrall. She would die first and she supposed she had. She would do it over a thousand times. A billion times.

“If I was a brave man…”

“Julian. Look at me please. You are a brave man. How not? Would you be here if it weren’t truth?” _Would I?_

“I’m not a man at all, anymore.” He says so quietly she has to take a moment to process the words. She takes a moment, scoffs affectionately at the drama of it all. How could he possibly think…?

“You are you. And I will not allow you to speak of yourself this way. Julian you’re….you’re breathtaking. You always have been, to me.”

That evening--if it was evening, indeed--Kore-Sidhe sits quietly with him, with her thoughts, and wonders if everyone went to bed at night secretly suspecting they were a monster.


	2. Chapter 2

“I am alone against hoards;  
I cannot stop nor let go.  
I stand here in the long cold hours  
alone against every foe.”  
-The Tain Bo Cuailgne

~*~

“Will you sit, Kore-Sidhe?” Julian asks, gesturing toward a chair nearby him.

  
She had spent time pacing around the bar, her own tankard of salty bitters in hand, thinking and watching the decanters refilling themselves over and over again like clockwork. It unsettled her. She felt uneasy watching Julian put away drink after drink, and neither could she condemn or blame him, as disgusting as salty bitters tasted. It was more than enough to make her head buzz with the noise of questions.

  
“You look…”

  
“I can imagine.” She shivers with a grimace. Instead of taking the barstool she walks to the hearth in the corner and steels herself against her own nerves. This place is too cold by half.

  
Kore-Sidhe, no fan of fire, did not like hearth lighting. Small fires were one thing - to light a candle was easy magic, but a big one was a challenge and it wasn’t the technical aspect; it was the smell of the sparks catching. Of flesh burning and ash floating midair, carried by wintry winds. She shudders and focuses on a memory of warmth, the smell of Julian’s hair, the stove salamander at home. A small fire takes life in the hearth of the Hanged Raven, a hearth which has lain stone cold for too long. She flinches, watching the flame take, and backs away from the heat until she hits Julian. She hadn’t even heard him stand up.

  
“Oof!”

  
“I’m sorry!” She stammers, and takes a moment to collect herself and to remind herself where she is. “Sit beside me?”

  
Kore-Sidhe settles herself on the floor. The floorboards creak, and the relief in the soles of her feet is a sweet breeze in high summer. She still has no idea how long she’d been walking. Moreover, she has no idea how long she’s paced the floor of this place. It feels like moments. It feels like an age. Perhaps only been a few hours. She can’t be bothered to voice her own questions aloud as Julian settles next to her, a few feet away. His storm gray eyes are focused not on the hearth fire, but on her. If she did not know him, if she hadn’t known Julian the doctor, she might be unsettled. He doesn’t often blink, she’s noticed.

“That won’t do.” Kore-Sidhe says and slides closer to him, back turned against the fire. The light creates a warm halo around her head and shoulders. Her right thigh touches his left. He flinches but doesn’t move away.

  
“Are you alright, darling?”

  
“I’m tired, but I needn’t rest just yet.”

  
“Everyone needs to rest.”

  
_Ah, he is still in there._ She smiles, swirling her rancid drink in its cup, wondering about magic--transmutation, specifically. Something she was never any good at. To turn one thing into another thing entirely had always been a struggle for her. She wonders if she’d ever been any good at it, if this is the universe simply mocking them both.

  
“What of yourself? I see no resting place here.”

  
It was true, she didn’t see any bed, but neither had she explored. In a spliced realm it was quite possible that no one needed sleep. It certainly looked as if Julian had not closed his eyes since they had last seen one another.

  
The only parts of the Rowdy Raven Kore-Sidhe has seen before are the bar and the dance floor. This isn’t quite the Rowdy Raven, Kore-Sidhe thinks, as she observes the place. Julian looks away sheepishly and she knows it’s a checkmate for now. There’s a stairway to the rightmost side of the room next to the entrance amid a sea of shattered glass. She doesn’t recall the Rowdy Raven having mirrors hung in its entryway. It might’ve, but she can’t draw the image in her memory. She had been too focused on their task, on Julian himself, the few times she’d been here. There?

  
“Is this Barth’s?” she dares to ask, unsure of whether she should regret the questioning.

  
“I, er, don’t rightly know.” Julian shrugs, gazing at her with sad eyes.

  
Instead of speaking further he pulls Kore’s legs onto his lap and deftly unlaces her shoes with his talons. He’s familiar enough with recognizing when someone is in pain, and he can tell she aches. She needn’t say a word and he knows she wouldn’t. Julian runs his changed hands over the soft velvet of her coat and Kore feels as if she could fall asleep right there. She would miss dreaming, she thinks to herself as Julian gently rubs her legs. The pain is now more of a nuisance than a hindrance and she sighs in deep relief when he moves his hands to the angry soles of her feet. She could cry with relief, she really could, and it has very little to do with the pain of her body.  
The silence is punctuated by the schism of a sound belonging to an accordion. The fact that it plays itself doesn’t bother her, but the sound grates. The walls are different from what she recalls of the Rowdy Raven. There are roots bursting through some of the walls as if the room had been hollowed out from a large hill, as if trees grew above them. The light is eerie and dim and reddish; it reminds her of somewhere she’s sure she’s never seen in waking life. And yet it feels familiar. She finds it hard to remember all the places she’s seen in dreams, all the feelings she’s felt in the past several days and the past several years.

  
“So ah, Kore. If you don’t mind, could you tell me…?”

  
“What would you like me to tell you?”

  
“How you got here? Exactly, precisely how you got here?”

  
“It’s a long story,” she softly sighs.

  
“I think we’ve got plenty of time, don’t you, my dear?” Julian’s voice is sullen.

  
Well, if it was a story he wanted, it would be a story indeed. Kore sips her drink, considering how she might tell the tale.

  
“I woke up somewhere. I’m uncertain where. After the masquerade, I…” Kore bites her lip, remembering everyone in the Devil’s thrall. Emerging from the realms without Julian, her weak heart hammering in her chest and threatening to choke her, the petrified fear of never finding her friends.

  
Kore-Sidhe recalls Mazelinka suddenly, she who had tried to keep her in place, not walking toward that infernal dinner party. How the old woman had danced wildly like all the other party guests with their bloodied feet and their frenzied, oblivious harlequin grins. How she had disappeared into the crowd, ripped away from Kore-Sidhe. She didn’t know what had happened to the old woman, or anyone else at the party after this.

  
“Kore-Sidhe, I truly… apologize!” The panic in Julian’s voice is nearly physical, and the feathers on his head rise in alarm. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m just, ah, curious, it’s alright. You don’t have to tell me any more.”

  
“I’m only trying to find the words. Calm, love. It’s fine.” Kore kisses the back of his hand and continues with her tale before he can protest, making him positively blush.  
She loves his tales; Julian is a fantastic storyteller. Kore-Sidhe once loved hearing about wherever Asra had travelled to as well, whenever he cared to share details. It wasn’t the same style of the telling, but she loved the listening and the different ways people told stories. Where they paused and stopped and started, where they got distracted and why. Stories made her feel better. She tries to push through the weariness pressing down on her in order to make the tale half interesting and at least half less horrifying.

“After the masquerade I woke up somewhere I didn’t know. Everything was spacey, as if no land had an anchor. Does that make sense? Scout found me and I asked her to lead me to you, and so she did. It took….well, I’m not at liberty to say. Not because I don’t want to, I just can’t recall. It was a long time.

  
“She led me and all the world felt thick and strange. I saw places that I knew,and places I didn’t. The marketplace was empty and had such an eerie glow; like it didn’t fit. The palace view warped midair, but nothing burned.”

  
“What… else did you see, darling?” Julian hangs on every last one of her words as if she might be good at the telling.

  
“There was a windowsill with flowers and they had eyeballs growing in them. It was watching us. Oh! Before I forget, we found Malak!”

  
The raven squawks at his name and flutters over from where he’d been sitting up in the rafters. He perches on Julian’s shoulder and begins to preen, picking out debris and dead, frazzled feathers. Kore-Sidhe pretends not to see the inflamed flesh beneath them, the scarring. Instead she twists the band of silver on her sixth finger, as she nearly always does when nervous or contemplating. Julian must have tried to pull his feathers out. Had it been hatred of them? It must have. Had he thought it would stop them growing back? Logically she can’t think that he’d believe it so, logical as he is. Was? Her guts churn and her stomach flips. No, he hasn’t been taking care of himself because he’s been harming himself instead. Where would she _be_ if Scout had not found her? Wandering, lost in the mists, out there still? Asleep wherever she was? Unable to sit here, considering how she might help him reverse the damage the Devil’s done. They had come so far….

  
“Thank you for bringing him, Kore. I…missed him.”

  
“He missed you. He was outside the palace causing a rumpus.”

  
“Classic Malak. Ahem. Please continue. I’m sorry.” Julian pushes another tankard toward her--elderflower liquor. It’s her favorite. A single petrified blossom floats betwixt the golden liquid and the glass holding it. It simply appeared in his hand; the blink of an eye was all it took. Kore hadn’t even noticed it appear until she heard the scrape of glass against floorboard.

  
Fascinated, Kore-Sidhe takes the glass from him. It would be an addition to the constantly growing pile of glass tankards in the corner, but it was also curious that he had remembered her favorite drink, and that he’d seemingly conjured it from nowhere. _Magic is chaos, and chaos is magic_: this, Kore-Sidhe had learned from Asra and from observing all else. Gasping cold and naked in a tin bathtub three years ago, she knew it. There could be any number of answers, all equally pliable, awaiting her decision as to what would _become_.

“Never say that. Sorry. Not to me.” She says, shaking her head. “Scout tried to stop me, but I had to get Malak. I grabbed one of his tail feathers, poor thing. I hope he’s not upset with me. After, the three of us were in this cottage with flowers, and the eyes in the flowers were watching us. They….they blinked at me? And then all of a sudden we were in the swamp. We wandered for such a long time…”

  
“Er… What did you give Scout to… bring you here?” Julian interrupts.

  
“I’ll get to that part. We found a leech with two heads. It was simply enormous, it called itself Left and Right, and they stopped us, and--”

  
“Wait, wait, hold on a moment, dear. A leech with two heads? A two headed leech? Are you certain?”

  
“All I know is what I saw. They asked me a riddle in exchange for information. Oh, Julian, they were so stupid! Bickering with one another as if they had all the time in the world. Infuriating. So I answered their stupid riddle and they were none too pleased.”

  
“W-What did you ask it?”

  
“If they had seen you.” Kore-Sidhe twists her ring fervently.

  
“What did it ask you? Was it at least any clever?”

  
“I….I can’t remember.” Kore-Sidhe’s brow knits as she tries to remember, but it’s like grasping at smoke. Her conversation with Left and Right felt as if it’d happened weeks ago, but that couldn’t be. She had just been there, hadn’t she?

  
“And uh, afterwards?”

  
“It told me to follow the signs. A false moon and blue moss.”

  
“How could you know if a moon was false? How does a false moon look?” Julian looks as if the strain of figuring it out might snap him in half.

  
“I looked at it and saw that it was a glamour. I felt its falseness. I knew it wasn’t there at all, or that it was something else. I found blue moss and it led me to a door, standing between trees in red water. So I said goodbye to Scout and here I am.”

  
“That’s the most far fetched thing I’ve heard all day, darling. Peculiar and, ah, almost theatrical indeed.” Julian does not smile, but his voice betrays a slight amusement, as if he’s trying to picture his love talking to a two headed leech with perfect calm.

  
Kore-Sidhe sips again. They both lapse into a thick silence, fingers entwined on her lap. The accordion has quieted itself and Kore-Sidhe sighs. It sounded ominous and she didn’t like it but she never would’ve asked for it to be silenced. Not if the sound comforted Julian.

  
“Do tell me, Kore-Sidhe,” Julian murmurs. “Whatever did you give Scout to get you here?”

  
Kore-Sidhe closes her eyes against the question.

  
“You thought I’d forget? Nothing happens here without price or payment.”

  
“No. I didn’t think that. I gave her the only thing of value I had.”

  
“Your tarot. My darling Kore, why?” He almost sounds relieved but the worry bleeds true in the croak of his voice. He doesn’t hide his face at his own birdsound, this time.  
“It was never mine. I expect she’ll return it to its maker.”

  
This is truth: it had been Asra’s, an invention all his own which had spread through Vesuvia like wildfire. Not every magician could make their own means of divination so comprehensive and yet so elusive, and he had been the first to do it in this way. Asra, her genius teacher. That one was the first deck ever to exist. False versions galore littered Vesuvia. Everyone had wanted a piece of that divinatory pie; Kore remembers it, bemused.

  
“But why would you? That was special to you.”

  
“Because I did.” Kore-Sidhe shrugs and gets to her feet, offering Julian her hand. “Let’s not dwell on that. I’m interested in this place. Put your drink down and help me look around, yes?”

  
“What, ah….what are you, er, looking for?”

  
“This and that.” Kore-Sidhe tugs her shoes back on and laces them as tight as they’ll go. Her feet are swollen, but she won’t chance walking where there may be glass, or anything else she mightn’t have seen.

~*~

She starts with the hearth itself, searching around its base and beneath the tables Julian’s shoved against the walls. Malak hops on the bartop expectantly but makes no sound. No bricks in the wall give way to any secret. Julian sits crouched on one of the tables, shrouded in shadow, making no noise. Maybe it was a mistake to tell him of the exchange; he’d uttered not a word since she finished her story. Kore-Sidhe couldn’t bring herself to be dishonest with him, nor avoid his questioning. She’d had enough of that, enough half truths and more than enough of things unsaid. If it was uncomfortable, then it must be so. They had no choice but to work through that.  
She loved those cards, but truth held fast that they were never hers to begin with. Asra gave them to her ‘to play with’ the night Countess Nadia had come knocking at their door, looking not for Kore-Sidhe, but for Asra himself. Divination wasn’t bound only to the Major Arcana, or to oracle cards. There were so many ways of seeing, after all. Kore-Sidhe feels no true loss at the departure of the tarot. Witches the world over used the stars, the bones of their dead, the tides and the teacup to tell what was unseen.  
She hops over the bartop and stares at shelves and shadows. She pulls down a large bottle stoppered with an enormous cork, blows the dust from it and reads a label: **_Extract of Botrychium Lunaria._** Moonwort, how strange. She places it back on the shelf and continues to peruse bottles upon bottles of potions, drawers full of herbs and knives and other trinkets. Packets of herbs and seeds litter the shelves beneath the bar.

  
All of a sudden, Kore-Sidhe finds that she recognizes many of them. The purple parchment paper, sealed with yellow wax and sometimes gray, bearing the image of a mortar and pestle. Jars with matching purple labels, written in a delicate, slanted hand. Barth visited her a number of times for these ingredients! Images of springtime wash over Kore-Sidhe, and she recalls a strong voice. Here they are, all filed away in the Hanged Raven, all the ingredients Barth puts in the drinks and then some.

  
“Have… er, have you found anything, Kore-Sidhe?” Julian croaks from his designated corner.

  
“Oh, well….” What can she really say? “We scored!” It was a term she learned from someone in her travels, someone she was fond of. Why couldn’t she think of who?

  
She stands up from where she crouched, beaming ear to ear. Julian merely looks puzzled and slightly afraid of the mess before her.

  
“Barth bought these from us, I remember! I saw him a few times and I always wondered why he came into the shop on a weekly basis. Guess I know now.”

  
“Barth visited you in the shop?”

  
“I guess he put some of this in the drinks, then.”

  
“I thought this mess was just decorative.” Julian’s eyes widen in alarm.

  
“I suppose not.” Kore grins suggestively. “They’re magic infused drinks. This explains much to me.”

  
She turns her head back to the different sachets. There’s Feverfew and Goldenseal and Saint John’s Wort. There’s Chamomile and Brahmi, Lavender and Jalap root and all sorts of crushed flower petals. Rosemary and sweet pea to attract love, yarrow for exorcism and strength. Elementary magic, all, but powerful in its simplicity.  
“What, ah… what are you planning to do with those?” Julian clears his throat nervously.

  
“I’m not sure as yet. Let’s investigate the kitchen, shall we?”

  
Kore disappears between the shelves to a desolate stone room. Another hearth lies quiet and this time she doesn’t light it. The other can die down first. Nothing of interest dwells in the drawers or atop the counter. There’s a wooden door which, when she shoves it open, leads to a small courtyard bearing a yew tree, a wooden bathtub, several old buckets, an ax buried in a log, and not much else. Julian doesn’t join her under the dark expanse of sky. Kore-Sidhe sees no stars and no moon, neither true nor glamoured.

  
“Upstairs?” She raises her eyebrows, but Julian doesn’t respond. In that split second moment Malak hops a few times toward the door and flies out into the dark.

  
“He’ll be back.” Julian murmurs. Kore doesn’t bother with the deadbolt. Anything that wants in will find an in eventually. She takes a moment to breathe and sign a sigil over the doorway instead. The symbol she draws with the motion of her hands and fingers glows green for a moment before it sinks into the woodwork. It’s basic, a simple _thou shalt not pass_

  
“What--what was that… darling?”

  
“Keeping unwanted guests out of your place.”

  
Her original notion is correct: all that existed up the stairway near the Hanged Raven’s door were several other doors to modest bedrooms. An idea comes over her, then. She knows what she’ll do with those herbs. First, she’ll have to build something, and she will need the ax. Her idea only grows, blooming into something gentle as she places her left foot on the log and pulls.

~*~

“Stay back from me.” Kore-Sidhe tells Julian before the first swing of her ax bites into the four poster bed in the master bedroom--what once was Barth’s and Selasi’s bed.  
She doesn’t know it for certain. Kore-Sidhe doesn’t know anything for certain anymore, save for the fact that she knows nothing, but she must assume that it belonged to the barkeep and the baker once. It was the finest room in the inn, with the largest fireplace and the softest linens. There was a goose down comforter which must not have been cheap atop their overstuffed mattress. She has to assume also that the men would understand why she has to destroy it. She swings again and again and again until the structure is barely recognizable as having been a bedframe for a sizeable four poster.

  
The mattress now sits in a corner of the bedroom waiting for its time to be useful. In a matter of minutes, the only thing which sits before Kore-Sidhe is a jagged hill of kindling. Julian merely stares, saying nothing. He won’t judge her for needing to destroy something, not when he’s destroyed so much himself.

  
“Kore, may I help you? Please, let me be of use.”

  
She wants to protest, to tell him that his worth doesn’t come from usefulness. But she doesn’t want to argue. She doesn’t want to say the wrong thing again and again.

  
“The sheets and blankets from the other rooms, would you fetch them for me? All of them please.”

  
“I…why?”

  
“It’s a surprise,” is the only thing she says before disappearing down the stairs to leave the excess kindling in the kitchen. Kore-Sidhe leaves a small pile near the fireplace in the bedroom so that she might start a fire if they want one.

  
While Julian loots the other rooms she drags the mattress into the center of this one. It’s too flat on its own and his elbows would poke into the floor. She hauls two of the straw mattresses from the smaller rooms, settling them side by side so the feather one might sit atop with more cushion than just the patterned carpet.

  
“I got the--wait, what is this that you’re making, Kore-Sidhe?” Julian drops the load of blankets. The look on his face speaks of nothing but desolation, like he might burst into weeping.

  
“Everyone needs a rest.” She picks the blankets up off the floor and arranges them over and around the mattress pile. She tosses the few pillows from Barth’s bed and the inn bedrooms.

  
Stepping back to observe her handiwork, she can see that it looks more like a nest than she’d intended it to. She could kick herself for that, but it would work for its intended purpose. The sheer number of pillows reminds her of her own bed in the shop. Now there are no posts or bed hangings to get in the way of Julian’s impressive wingspan--a wingspan she hadn’t truly seen, but imagined must be immense if it was to carry a full grown person across the sky. The center of the room worked best for this. The bed-nest sat halfway between the hearth and the latticed window, so he could stretch if he needed to without hitting a wall or catching his feathers aflame by accident. The room itself wasn’t especially wide or long, but the rooms for inn guests were smaller and had braziers rather than hearths. No, this would be fine.

  
“Kore-Sidhe, I….”

  
“A bar is no place of rest.” This is all she says before tossing the final blanket, a dark green woven wool, atop the pile of mattresses in their vague oval shape.

  
“What about you?”

  
“What about me?” Kore-Sidhe asks as Julian shuffles closer to her. He shifts his weight from one bent foot to another as if he’s uncertain of what he wants to say.

  
“Um, ah...Kore-Sidhe, where will you...ah, where will you sleep?” He coughs as if it’ll hide the red of his ears, creeping onto his face.

  
“Not in the hole, and that’s a promise.”

  
It nearly makes him smile. Kore-Sidhe can see the corner of his lips turn up just slightly, only for a moment, at the memory of Mazelinka’s trapdoor. He had forgotten its musty, buggy existence. The Hole was a hiding place of his with increasing frequency as he stayed in Vesuvia long past the time where his wanted ads began to fall off the sides of ancient buildings. He doesn’t feel the bugs on his skin anymore, and yet he remembers the dank smell and the feeling of cold, hiding out down there. He also recalls that she never stayed there, preferring to sleep with him. His blush glows brighter.

  
“I’ll steal a mattress we haven’t used.” Kore shrugs. She doesn’t want to make assumptions. The way he flinched from her when she arrived here was enough to convince her that perhaps he didn’t long to touch her. Perhaps he didn’t want anyone touching him while he was like this. The memory of cold tub walls makes her spine tingle.

  
“Sleep here,” Julian says instead. “Like.....like before.”

  
“You needn’t ask me twice.” Kore’s cheeks go pink, matching his. “But you can’t get in yet. No offense, Julian, but we’re both befouled by….this.” She has no nice way to say it.  
Sweat has built up on her skin and she feels clammy. Her feet are back to that slow throb and Julian looks more a fright every time she chances to gaze at him. Her stomach reties itself in knotwork every time she notices another raw patch of skin, another place where scabbed over blood ran in rivulets between his feathers. Beneath the nerves, anger simmers over the flame of her heart.

  
She will never, ever ask about Julian’s transformation, but she can’t help but wonder how long it took the Devil to make him into this. _What sick magic…? I_t’s almost enough to make her glad she was never good at transmutation. Growing and re-growing feathers was uncomfortable for birds. Had the Devil broken the bones in Julian’s legs before they could be turned inward? How long had it taken for talons to sprout from his hands, for his voice to change ever so slightly, becoming more of a low croak? Did he know his red eye had vanished? There were no mirrors in the Hanged Raven. It was a cruel jest, and it made her blood broil.  
The one thing Julian had always hidden was his plague marred eye, a symbol of the wisdom he’d acquired and all he sacrificed to get it. Rage sings in Kore-Sidhe’s veins. His red eye revoked, now perfectly clear, and the rest of him….she didn’t believe him mutilated. She could never. He hadn’t been before either. If she could only get her hands round that goat’s neck….but she couldn’t dwell on it. She couldn’t give in to the fury. It mattered little now, how she felt or what she wanted in a moment of regret. This was more important. Healing was more important. But the insistence, that nagging desire lurks in the back of her mind and it thirsts, and it thirsts, and she knows it will never stop.

~*~

Watching Kore-Sidhe heat bathwater with magic reminds Julian of another shared bath between them. The images resurface like lightning, coloring his face in a deep flush. The pale skin of her shoulder against a gold border, the ashen blue mark branded on her chest, the rosiness of her skin. He feels guilty for even looking at her that way now, with desire, with want. Her hair is plastered to her neck with sweat, hands waving over the extra large wooden tub as she murmurs something quietly in a language he’s absolutely sure he never learned. He’s heard her speak it before, a language of spells. She doesn’t always speak when spellcasting, he’s noticed. She rarely talks, if his memory serves. She’ll move her hands and her fingers in patterns, creating symbols in midair as if she’s offering a prayer to whatever gods or spirit might listen. It was mesmerizing to watch her do anything. She could be writing out her own taxes and he would hang on her every motion. He missed her so viscerally that he misses her even now, as she stands in the dark kitchen, a cavernous space aglow with firelight. Was this real or an illusion?

  
He can imagine what Kore might say to that; she would insist that _oh, it’s a real illusion_. She would smile at him, hold his hand, and she would kiss his hideous face, and she would stay.

  
“Almost done,” she says as he waits just outside the doorway. Her voice jars him out of his spiraling thoughts, and he shifts his weight between the grotesque stalks of his feet.

  
She’s spent several minutes sniffing packets of herbs and tossing the contents of small bottles into the bathwater. It’s fragrant, sharp and sweet all at once. Julian spies little sprigs of lavender and yarrow leaves in the bathwater, and he smells sweet pea. He has to assume that there’s some sort of magic going on here. Though it makes him inordinately nervous, he knows she won’t do anything to harm him. This Kore-Sidhe is the real one, and that stark fact makes him more nervous than any magic ever could. Even the magics with chanting, with blood.

  
It means that against all odds, the true Kore-Sidhe had found him--something she was never meant to be able to do. Julian had been so certain he would never see her ever again. He was so certain the Devil made good on his promise to isolate her from Julian. He can hear that goat’s granite voice and he can smell that copper stink which followed him. The dread settles on Julian’s shoulders, heavier than the burdens of plague and memory. It was only a matter of time before.....before He noticed something. Julian feels as though he may vomit, but Kore-Sidhe’s gentle voice brings him back to earth again.

  
She’s leaning against the doorway and tells him the bath is ready, and he should hurry up and get in before it gets cold, and she’ll be back with something to help ease him. He does as he’s bid, sinking into the fragrant water, and suddenly it’s as if all those thoughts are far away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 is mostly fluff and a recap for those of us who haven't played the reversed end in awhile. and for those of you who have played Julian's route but not the reversed end. The plot thickens along the road ahead...


	3. Chapter 3

“Wine comes in at the mouth/And love comes in at the eye/That's all we shall know for truth/before we grow old and die/I lift the glass to my mouth/I look at you, and I sigh. -Yeats

~*~

“Please….ah, don’t look.”

Kore-Sidhe can barely make out his words, despondent and wilted as they are.

“You have my oath, I won’t peek.” She turns from the kitchen doorway and focuses instead on putting the herbs and extracts behind the bar into some semblance of an order.

Should she go alphabetically, or according to their need? There’s not nearly as much here as there was in her shop, but Barth has an alarming amount of junk. There are more tankards and jars, cups and elegant glass-blown liquor glasses than any barkeep could ever need, much less a barkeep who operated in the South End. It must’ve been a hot spot in Vesuvia, when the place was in Vesuvia. His ingredients are all obviously intended for drink mixing and garnishing but here and there are ingredients from faraway lands, things she recognizes. There are even ones Julian might recognize: Queen’s goldenglow, prancing thimbleberry, dried tingleberries. Kore-Sidhe slips the tingleberries into a gauzy pouch and hides them in one of the pockets of her coat. They’re famed for aiding the user in dreaming clairvoyance; she kept a massive stock of them in the shop, once. Not that Kore seeks the dreaming realms anymore. She wonders whether she needs to, with the world as it is. 

She finds Datura and monkshood--beloved of her beloved-- belladonna suspended in what smells like moonshine, seeds and pressed blooms of the castor flower in a yellowed envelope. She’s suddenly overcome by a wave of longing for her own garden behind the shop, particularly hers and Asra’s toxic plant corner. She can see the streaming sunlight, the lovely red flowers glowing in the sun, but she cannot remember _why_ she had a poison garden.*

“What did he slip into the salty bitters, do you think?” Julian’s voice almost echoes off the empty walls.

“I haven’t the slightest,” Kore-Sidhe replies.

“Magic drinks. Magic plants. Magic bar…”

She resists the urge to laugh. It’s such a dry way of saying it, cynical, as Julian’s always been. Kore can nearly see him shaking his head in disbelief. The aroma of the bathwater makes her head swim, though perhaps that’s mere circumstance. Prancing Thimbleberry was meant to alleviate symptoms of anxiety, not aggravate them. The things she’s put in the bathwater are strong because they must be. It’s a healing bath, infused with herbs that strengthen the person soaking in it. It’s a concoction she’s mixed many times for herself. She can recall sitting in the stone tub in the tiny bath hut behind the shop, the aroma of the water soothing her out of calamity. The memories all blurred together when she tried to think of them, but an early one comes to her.

Perhaps it was two years ago? It couldn’t have been more than that. The entire first year of her second life is lost to her, just as all the years of her first. She had been sitting with the door wide open watching flowers bloom and honeybees finish their day’s work as firebugs emerged to greet the night. She smiles to herself now, at how scared she had been to languish in a bathing shed all alone. It was the first time she stepped out of the house, the first thing she thinks she had done for herself. 

She could tell Julian what was in that tub, if he asked. Kore finds that she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him why she’s put those things there--for him. She could sing his praises forever, but she knows he won’t buy it. She could explain the magic of it, which was really only herbalism. It was only magic if he squinted. She thinks of all the things she wants--wanted--to say, but didn’t. Was it too late? She wants so much for him to see himself the way she does: brilliant, beautiful, hysterically vibrant and smart as a whip. He mightn’t have believed it before, but surely he wouldn’t now.

“Kore-Sidhe….would you, ah, help me? Please?” His voice cuts through her cloud of thoughts, a sweet knife.

“Shall I break my oath?” she teases.

“I, erm…I can’t reach.”

She turns to help immediately. If she cannot bring herself to use words, she’ll use actions. Kore-Sidhe soaks a shred of soft woven fabric which has lain on the countertop and gently wrings it out over his feathers, buffing the dirt off. She’s never been talented at bending liquids with magic. They’ve grown everywhere, his feathers. They are black as the nighttime sea, and when they catch the light they shine blue and green. 

Julian has always been lovely, with his pale eyes and devious smirk. Kore-Sidhe would be lying if she said she hadn’t been immediately smitten with the tall stranger who had so graciously helped her out of a streetside barrel. It feels like so long ago. He still is beautiful, but now it’s an ethereal sort of beauty, as if he’s stepped out of a  surreal  dreamscape.

Heat creeps down her neck, pooling in her chest, turning her ears red. Kore-Sidhe uses an empty beer stein to rinse where she’s washed and holds another damp cloth over the raw skin where he’s torn his feathers out. There are a few patches of flesh like this at the back of his neck and along his arms. She’s careful to be delicate; not even wanting to pat them dry for fear of causing him further pain. She wipes away the dirt on his face, erasing the tear tracks which have illustrated his cheeks for as long as she’s been here. As if to make up for their lack, her own eyes begin to sting.

Kore-Sidhe keeps her breathing steady, dips the cloth, wipes his face. Breathes deep, dips….and she can’t do it. She cannot just ignore or accept this. She lets the cloth sink to the bottom of the tub, instead holding his face between her hands. Julian has had his eyes closed this entire time, but he opens them when she stops washing his face.

“Kore-Sidhe…”

She kisses him delicately. His lips are still warm, the way they always were. She presses another kiss to his lips, and then draws back.

“Why, erm….why did you stop?” His eyes shine with the same curiosity from before, his voice hitches the same way.

“You don’t want me to? Stop, I mean to say?”

“Please, no.” Julian almost pleads. His voice is soft, familiar. Kore seems to remember a time when he had spoken to her like this.

Kore-Sidhe kisses him again and again, both their tears mingling with scented bathwater, staring at one another as if neither of them had ever seen a vision so lovely. Kore sinks to her knees beside the tub, Julian’s fingers tangled in her hair. Her braid is frizzy and heavy against her neck. 

“I can’t even touch you properly like this. I’ll hurt you, I’ll cut you by accident again, I’ll--” Frustration oozes into his voice; Kore can hear the fear there, too, as if he’ll lose her all over again. His face constricts in discomfort.

“Please, please do not fret over that. We’ll find a way to make things easier for you.” Kore-Sidhe presses her lips together in thought. She couldn’t come up with any ideas with her mind scrambled like this. If they weren’t going anywhere she would have to think of something. 

She soaks another cloth, runs it over the frazzled feathers on his chest, and wonders how she might get the filth out of his wings. She’ll deal with that first.

“Take this,” she tells him, grabbing a worn bedsheet she had taken from upstairs. “Wrap it around yourself and sit with your wings over the tub.”

“Er…whatever you say, dear.”

“Spread for me?” Kore-Sidhe’s face glows red for a split second after she asks the question, and she’s glad he’s turned away from her.

Julian rustles his wings, stretching out only a little, just enough for her to run warm water over his feathers so she might siphon away the grit. She works at that diligently, until the water is so filthy that there’s no way any dirt or sweat or blood remains on him.

“You’re done, I think. Are you ready for the fun part?” 

He looks at her skeptically.

“Take my hand,” she says.

She helps him up from where he sat and keeps her eyes averted despite the bedsheet, in an attempt to honor her oath. She draws the index finger and thumb of her left hand together before her lips and gently breathes out, as if to blow a bubble. No bubble emerges, but a breeze of persistent force dries the moisture on his feathers.

“Turn, please.” Kore-Sidhe does it again, drying his feathers as she changes the direction of the breeze with her fingers. The dampness on him is gone, as is the fire in the kitchen’s hearth.

“May I look now?” she asks.

“You, um, I ah…yes. You can.” He sounded more like himself, at least. She can’t help but notice a blush creeping across his face.

“I learned that spell not so long ago. It’s easier to do for someone else, don’t you think?” Kore smiles. She often used a wide bowl to redirect the stream of hot air onto her hair. She hated it sitting against her neck, wet and heavy, only for it to frizz in the Vesuvian heat. Something tickles at the back of her mind, nagging. She thinks to herself that Vesuvia wasn’t like….where? Wasn’t like the weather where? Where her hair didn’t frizz? As soon as she reaches for the memory in her head, it’s gone.

~*~

It doesn’t take her long to erase the dust of the road from her own skin. It takes hardly a moment of magic; merely a splash of cold water from the pump and she’s clean. Her long coat drips dry over a stool in the bedroom, near the small fire Julian had built up while she tended to herself. She doesn’t bother to re-braid her iron grey hair before climbing onto the bed beside him. She remembers suddenly that Julian had liked her hair undone like that. She can feel his fingers unplaiting every last braid of hers, the night of the masquerade. 

It had been during their respite in Nadia’s bathroom. She stares into the fire, her cheeks and ears going bright red. She had looked at him, she was sure, like a woman starving. The way water dripped from his hair, how the flimsy robe plastered itself against his wet chest. Memory had never been so persistent for Kore-Sidhe. He had asked if he could undo her braids, just to see what she would look like without them. In hindsight she was sure it was an excuse to touch her, to have her close. 

“I’m not made of glass, you know.” She tells him as he shuffles around their conglomeration of blankets and pillows. His feathers make him look fluffy, but she knows it’s aprehension

“I know, I…uhm, I…” 

Kore takes his hand and gently pulls him towards her. She had cracked the window for Malak beforehand, for whenever he decided to come back. She can’t hear the songs of night creatures outside, but she can feel a quiet breeze on her skin. Julian tucks his bird feet beneath the blankets, hiding them. He rests on his side, his wings folded up neatly so he takes up the least amount of space.

“The point of this contraption,” Kore grins and gestures to the bed, “Is so that you can be comfortable. It’s okay to be comfortable on your own bed, you know.”

“Er, I…yes, dear.” Julian says , voice threaded with self consciousness. His wings flutter out just a little as he shifts closer to her.

“Do you want me to go?” she asks. This wasn’t working as fast as she’d like it to. Still she’s terrified of rejection, of being pushed away again.

“NO!” Julian grasps her hand tight. “Please, stay with me. I’m sorry.”

He isn’t half hanging off the bed anymore, and Kore-Sidhe realizes she hasn’t seen him without a full glass in his hand until now, which she is glad of. Exhaustion settles over her like a layer of bricks but she knows she won’t sleep. She can’t sleep yet.

“You’ve been awake a long, long time, haven’t you?” Julian asks in a soft voice--his Dr. Jules voice.

“It’s neither here nor there.”

“Do you, ah, know how long? You’ve been awake, that is? Can you um, tell, how long?”

“I cannot say when it was that I lost time, but it was before I got here, for a certainty.” Kore murmurs, her lips pressed against the scaly skin of his hand, their fingers entwined. She can feel him shaking and nestles closer.

“You needn’t be nervous. I’m not going anywhere, Julian.”

“I’m not…n-nervous, darling. I…I know. I know you’re not going anywhere.”

Kore can tell he is saying this for his own benefit. Perhaps if he tells himself enough times, he’ll believe it. She won’t stop telling him, though. The words come to her and she says them. Words and actions. Actions and words, together, might just be a salvation of sorts.

“Good.”

“Sweet Kore-Sidhe…” Julian sighs and plays with a strand of her hair, twirling it around one of his fingers. Kore’s face heats whenever he says her name. She’ll never get tired of hearing his voice.

“If you’ve lost time, does this mean time no longer exists? That it’s no longer relevant? How does that work?” he ask, ever the scientist

She hadn’t expected such an existential question so soon. Or any more questions about how she had gotten here. Kore smiles, unsure of how to answer. It must be a question which has preyed on his mind. He must have figured out rather quickly that time no longer flowed the way it had before. Kore-Sidhe can feel it on her skin: raw, unformed magic.Unadulterated it fills the air like smog, existing without shape. Magic wasn’t meant to be like this; it never existed so heavy in the world before, pregnant with possibility. Therefore, it made perfect sense that time would flow differently, to her. But that must have been a slap in the face for Julian when he figured it out.

“I think it’s magic which causes the irrelevance of time .” Kore says, measuring her words so as not to scare him back into silence. “I’ve read so many stories these past years….”

They’d had a similar conversation once, about magic. About his fear of it, how he couldn’t control it, how chanting and blood and ritual were of the old world, and not his world. Not the world he wanted to make. Magic itself defied both space and time, existing within and outside such mortal parameters. This was why, Kore was given to guess, the Major Arcana had their own little realms in which to exist. They couldn’t live in Vesuvia proper where magic could only be found when sought, when practiced. It didn’t permeate the very space of earth with such force. Kore had often thought to herself that the Arcana must drink magic like wine to keep themselves alive. What would have happened if they existed in the world with no access to their own realms, or one another’s? Would they have wasted away like flowers in a summer draught? She had to think it was so, if the surge of magic which now thrummed in the air allowed them to travel at will in the physical world. 

To use magic, to control the chaos, one had to know that magic wasn’t beholden to the path the magician who wielded it walked. The path itself chose the magician, not the other way around. Or so she had come to believe, in her studies. So many theories were what kept her going, once. Thinking about it. Feeling it. How could she tell him that? How could she confirm his fears when there was so much he didn’t know or understand? How magic sang in her veins like a song, how complete she felt when dreaming, projecting, flipping cards or gazing into a murky teacup?

“Tell me about them. The stories you’ve read.” Julian asks, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her close. He tosses one of the blankets around her shoulders.

“I…I had to learn to read again, you know. Once I could do that without help, I couldn’t stop. Stories from Prakra, from Drakr, Nevivonese stories which you likely know already….stories from everywhere. A hero disappears into another realm, as I have done. As you have done. As everyone does when they sleep. Places where time isn’t real, or it works so unlike the way it does when awake.

Time isn’t really true, where the heroes go. Or it flows so strangely that it doesn’t matter if it’s real. One forgets how one once lived, they who remain in another place for long enough.”

“I’ve heard many tales of that nature,” he says, still hanging on her every word as if they were something unfamiliar.

“It makes a hero go mad, once they realize…” Kore trails off, unsure as to whether she should’ve said that. Julian is bereaved, clearly. Despondent, obviously. But mad?

“Is it that way? Uhm, I mean, for you? Is it like that?” Kore looks at him with his furrowed brows, his clear eyes. It’s not mental acrobatics for him. His face is merely puzzled as he tries to understand.

“I don’t feel mad.” Kore shakes her head. “I feel as if….as if the rest of the world may just be.”

The thought had been rattling around in her head ever since Nadia had visited her shop. The world was mad, and she was merely walking in it. Only a few weeks with Julian had felt like years, and yet hours felt like weeks. Precious minutes with him which couldn’t last forever. That was why she knew she had to find this place. Her ribs had become a cage for her heart, squeezing the life out of her at the thought of never seeing him again as long as she lived. 

She wasn’t full enough of herself to think that her will alone could bend time or space, but she did think that her will alone may have beckoned Scout to her, that spirit of magic who could guide her hither and thither until she found what she sought. She was no hero, just lucky. Could their minutes now last forever? Did she want them to?

“There’s no coming back, Kore-Sidhe. And I am no hero, not even a little.”Julian murmurs, more to himself.

Some sick, twisted part of her is glad to hear Julian say that. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that his sacrifice had not saved either of them. There was no inkdrop of hope left that it might’ve. 

“I’ve never had much love for heroes,” Kore says tartly. But she smiles at him and kisses his hand, instead. “But I love you.”

“I…that’s…I love you, too, Kore-Sidhe.” Julian sputters and, with no more words left to say, he pulls her into his embrace, perfectly unwilling to let her go.

His shoulders are wracked with sobs and all she can do is soothe him, whispering that it will be alright, allowing him to bury his head in her shoulder and cry for all they’d lost in all this. She can’t even remember anything she’s lost, truly. A shop? An entire personal history she couldn’t recall? She had no family to return to. She, Kore-Sidhe, had nothing. She may as well have been the queen of naught, no empire to remember or long for, no legacy, no memories of the past tying her to the future.

“I know,” she murmurs against the feathers where his hair once grew. “That’s why I’m here. Because I love you more than air, and more than magic. Do you think you can sleep?”

“I can…try?”  He doesn’t want to, she can hear it in his voice. 

“Have you tried?”

“Yes. No. I….I can’t rightly recall.” He shakes his head. Memories regained and memories gone missing. It was a twisted game Kore-Sidhe was all too familiar with.

“Shall we try?” 

“I…I don’t know if I can.  _ You _ should rest, Kore-Sidhe.” 

“I don’t think I can if you can’t. Why don’t you ask me something more? Or tell me a story if you like?” Kore tilts her head and smiles wanly.

“I, ah, I don’t have any stories. Not anymore.”

“Because you cannot recall, or because you don’t feel like telling one?” Kore asks in earnest, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. The familiar weight of his head on her shoulder makes her feel more grounded, at least.

“Why don’t you tell me something, instead? I like hearing your voice, Kore. It’s been so long….” He could get lost in the sea of her voice. 

Maybe he could sleep if she just kept talking. He felt comfortable when she spoke more than just a reply, a sentence at a time. She was so quiet, like a spirit airborne, neither coming nor going. He was the talker, she the observer, but when observers spoke, Julian knew always to listen. 

“What else would you like to know?”

“Where do you go in your dreams? I, uhm, well….I’ve seen you sleep. Before, that is It’s…uh, it’s not like anyone else sleeping I’ve ever seen.”

Kore laughs at that. He must be the first person to have asked her. She didn’t make a habit of sleeping in the presence of others. It was a vulnerability she felt she couldn’t afford, though she couldn’t recall why. They had only shared a proper sleep once, and she couldn’t remember the where or the when. It was during her investigation. 

Kore-Sidhe had always been a vivid dreamer; she doesn’t know precisely how she knows it, but she does. Her first dreams after…after coming back, had been alight with color, but no sound, no visions. Only swirling pigmentation and undulating rhythm.

“Sometimes I simply go where they take me,” she tells him. “I’ve seen the realms in my sleep. Not only the realms of the Arcana, but others. When I was born….the second time, I mean, it was all colors and sounds but no form. After, it was all form and sound and color. Like living. Remember the sea pancakes?”

He nods. She takes a deep breath. She’s glad he remembers that - their bizarre adventures through the realms of the Magician, the Tower, all the great and terrible beauties which magic could make. He remembered some of those things, and that makes her heart beat a little faster. Here were pleasant memories she wishes to keep in her mind. Memories of bright stars and lovely forests, untainted. She hopes they don’t flee from her later on. She already feels as if something which was once close is now missing.

“It’s like that. I dream often of an enormous tree with glowing lights in its leaves. It’s so huge I can’t describe it. All the branches and the roots, reaching up and out. I find that place frequently. No one is ever there but me and sometimes birds. I remember seeing a falcon.”

“A falcon?” Julian murmurs, his voice groggier than before. Kore flexes her free hand, drawing little patterns against his shoulder.

“I don’t know her name, but I feel as if I know who she might be. Might’ve been…” she trails off. There’s still no sound from the outside world. No birds or crickets, no croak of the toad heralding nighttime. She supposes there wouldn’t be. After all, night and day are arbitrary here. They don’t exist. 

“Do you meet other people, in your dreams, I mean?”  Julian asks, his voice slow and sodden with weariness. 

“Rarely,” she replies and allows her eyes to drift closed. “It’s like being here. I needn’t drink or eat. I can’t sleep if I’m already asleep. In dreams one doesn’t age, and in dreams there is no time. In dreams there’s only you and….interlopers.”

~*~

_ The World is all made of rain, a deluge of shining droplets carrying her away. Kore-Sidhe gazes into a looking glass, darkness all around her. The glass shows her nothing at all, only swirling clouds and mist before her. Faintly she can hear ominous music, the crackling of a fire, screaming and wailing. _

_ She cannot move her head any which way, though desperately she tries. _

_ She isn’t here. She isn’t there. Sidhe--the lady of nowhere. The guttural crying ceases just as suddenly as it began. _

_ Is that her? It can’t be. She sees an entire silhouette, someone’s body. She’s too close for it to be herself. Or perhaps she’s in both places at once. How did she get here? _

_ She stands before the palace, an opalescent pathway under her feet. Scout and Malak sit on her shoulder. Somewhere in the murky distance another bird circles, its call a harrowed wail, and the image changes. A spring breeze. Asra, bent over a heavy tome beneath a tree. His face is stone. Kore watches herself, wringing her own hands, eyes cast on the path. Shattering glass. _

_ S h a t t e r i n g. _

_ A high pitched wail. She wrings her hands. She wrings her hands. Murmurs. _

_ “Scout?” Kore whispers, her voice unsteady, a quivering leaf in a summer storm. Her lips move but she doesn’t hear a word. _

_ Eyes on the ground. Don’t look up. Look up. Look up… _

_ His laughter, that infernal bleating, and sudden illness: Kore retches on that lovely pathway as glass shatters around her head. The sound is so deafening she plugs her ears rather than holding her braid out of the way of her sickness. _

_ They aren’t her hands when she looks at them. Clawed, black with feathers. She tries to pluck them out and some come free and some do not. She claws and claws until her fingers bleed and red rivers cleave the land, making valleys, making mountains. A beer stein thrown at the glass she looks into and it shatters again and again. _

_ The vision of The World between is no more. She chokes, drowning in knives of mirror glass. She can’t breathe. _

_ Suffocation. That laughter - if only she could cut it off, cut its throat, cleave it into silence. All the glass has drowned her, and she is silent. _

_ “Kore-Sidhe…” _

_ Someone calls. _

_ Someone, somewhere, softly and sweetly calling her name like a song. _

_ “Kore-Sidhe….” _

_ “Kore-Sidhe….” _

~*~

“KORE-SIDHE. KORE. K-K-K-KORE-SIDHE. ACHKAK!!!”

She awakens with a start, to a cacophony. Malak has returned and he screeches, perched on the windowsill. Kore finds that Julian is conspicuously absent. So she had slept, then? What was she seeing in that dream? She’s amazed she can still dream, here, wherever they are. The memory of that noxious laughter keeps her from moving for what feels like a year. When she does, she walks toward the bird to see what the commotion might be.

“Malak, sweetie, what do you have there?”

Lying on the windowsill is an assortment of metal objects: a hairpin, several rings of silver and gold and caked in bog mud. A soiled shred of fabric which once had a metallic sheen to it, what looks like a nail, and a sparkling rock. Malak chitters and quorks, pecking maniacally at the wood beneath his dainty ravens feet.

“What’s all this, pretty bird? Is this for me, or are you just showing off? Hop up, sweetie. Let us find him, yes?”

Malak lets out an alarmed  _ AaacCkkKK _ before settling on Kore-Sidhe’s shoulder. She scoops up his treasures in one hand and walks down the stairs to find Julian nursing another salty bitters. His eyes are still clear, not yet hazy with drink. He’s not wasted and that fills Kore-Sidhe with sweet relief.

“He was looking for you, I think.” Kore says, presenting the accoutrements of treasures on the table. She wasn’t going to tell Julian about this dream yet, not until she could pick it apart.

Malak hops down from her shoulder, silent for a moment, and settles beside Julian. He peeps into Julian’s ear, and Julian’s cheeks go red. Kore wonders that Julian can understand the bird, how he rationalized that away in the waking world of Vesuvia while he learnt and practiced medicine, while he partied in The Hanged Raven. She supposes anyone drunk out of their skull could rationalize a bird speaking to them. Perhaps he thought it a dream, himself.

“What has he told you?” she asks.

“He likes to bring me things.” Julian says, fingering the rings, the hairpin. “He always liked to bring me things.”

“Did you save them?”

“Sometimes. It’s how he expresses appreciation.” Julian nods as if affirming this more to himself. His flush is still bright, as if there’s something he won’t say. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Not entirely,” Kore says; she won’t lie to him. “Did you?”

“Only a little.” Julian needn’t mention his nightmares. He had them before, she seems to recall. That must be why he has such a hard time sleeping. It can’t have changed in a place like this. Not after all he’s been through, all His wraiths and the empty space.

Kore-Sidhe steals a slug of his drink, draining the glass before gently placing it back on the bartop. She twists the ring on her little finger and looks at him, puzzled. Julian’s blush doesn’t fade. He bites his lip; he won’t look directly at her, gazing instead at her hands.

“I was thinking we ought to clean up the glass over there, in the doorway.” Kore says, sitting with him there. 

“Why? No one is coming here.”

“I did.”

“You’re….well, Kore-Sidhe, you’re you, you know.” Julian shrugs, eyes flickering to the shining mirror shards in the entryway to The Hanged Raven. He almost looks there with longing. As if he might yearn to tread over the glass and leave. 

“This is so,” Kore nods. “I spotted a broom in the kitchen, but we needn’t do it now. I’ve had another idea. Would you hear of it?”

“Please, Kore-Sidhe, tell me, do.” 

“Hold on,” she rises and strides to the corner table and stops abruptly. A mountain of empty tankards had lain on the tabletop, yet now they don’t. She checks beneath the table bench and finds her bag, allowing herself a sigh of relief. 

Kore-Sidhe doesn’t know what she would do without that bag. She always carried it with her; it seemed to always have whatever she needed, when it was needed. The only thing of real value she’d ever carried was the tarot. But it didn’t mean the bag held nothing of value for her or him. Julian watches her, head tilted in curiosity over what she seeks. She boots herself off the barstool beside him so she can sit on the bartop itself and rummages in the bag, emptying it of the old medical scrolls she could barely recall stealing from his desk in the palace library. She had been there, but can’t recall the why of it. A book, thieved from his plague office, and the memories come flooding back.

She forces herself to breathe evenly as she rummages in the bag. Out comes a faded evergreen travelling cloak, a pair of tiny silver scissors, a spare pair of leggings and socks. A small pot of beeswax and almond oil comes next, a thick but pocket sized book bound in green leather, a utility knife with an engraved handle, and finally she finds what she had thought of: a coarse metal file intended for wearing away at chain links. She can’t remember why she has it. 

“This!” She nearly yelps triumphantly. “May I have your hand?”

Kore doesn’t wait for him to offer it. She takes his left hand gently and starts working on dulling the talons down. It’s almost a shame; she always wished she had long nails like the rich women she often saw in the marketplace. Rarely did they find themselves as regulars at the shop, but when they did turn up it was always out of desperation. They always appeared so deadly in their privileges. Much like the Countess Nadia…,

_ Nadia?! _

A jolt of anxious nausea punctuates Kore-Sidhe’s vigilant filing. She had forgotten, forgotten entirely, about the countess. This was why she had been in the palace library! That’s how Kore ended up here. She remembers, biting her lip. When had she forgotten these circumstances? Why did the tankards disappear? Her brows knit together in concentration, she considers this. Nadia came to ask Asra for help. Asra! Yes, that was it. She started investigating the late Count’s murder. This led her to Julian, after Nadia had pilfered the Magician from Kore-Sidhe--a test of her sleuthing abilities. She ought to write this down. How could she have forgotten so quickly? She had smacked Julian, her second visitor, in the head with a bottle. Asra left, Nadia came and went, and then Julian. The third was the charmer. She feels warm as she switches to Julian’s right hand. In his left he strokes the metal cloakpin she kept with her worn travelling cloak. She had forgotten it was hidden in her bag, too.

Several minutes pass and her work is finished. Julian stares from his hands, to her, and back.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” He asks, eyes wide with wonderment. It was always the simple things. “How do you fit so much in that bag?”

“Because you don’t have one of these in your bag of tricks? Julian, extroadinaire of home invasion and evasion of authority, how could you possibly live without a file?” Kore teases, raising an eyebrow. Julian looks….pleased. Almost happy.

“It’s yours, my love,”  she says.

“Thank you. I…uh….yes. Thank you.” Julian replies, still transfixed by her cloakpin.

“I love you too, Julian.”  Kore-Sidhe sounds bemused. Julian’s affliction with the cloakpin reminds her of Malak’s gifts. “Wait, Malak brought some things!” 

Kore goes to the table to scoop up Malak’s treasures, presenting them to Julian, who picks them up and looks them over one by one as if fascinated. 

“You say he likes to collect glittering things….” Kore says, hopping back up to sit on the bar. “Do you?”

“D-d-do I?” Julian sputters, looking guilty.

“Mmhm.” 

He swallows and nods, takes her hand and leads her to the back table once again where he passes her a worn drawstring bag. One which had sat beside her own beneath the bench. He presses it into her hands, not meeting her gaze. Kore opens it to find it absolutely brimming with shining objects: drink mixing spoons, a silver hair comb and an embellished straight razor which matched. A tiny bronze brush for mixing shaving foam, another enormous ring with a black stone, cleaved in two.

“Are these…?” Had he found these things here?

“I can’t…um..I just…” Julian chokes up, unable to make words form around his lips. Malak flaps his wings, perches on the table with a shrill  _ kreeeeee. _

“You’ve collected these, yes?” Kore asks. Julian nods in admittance.

“I can’t _stop,_ Kore-Sidhe. I have to have them in one place. I, um, I…I need them. I really need them. Uh….That’s all.” He sighs, relieved to have let that out.

“I understand,” Kore nods and adds Malak’s treasures to the bag of shining oddities. “Corvids do this.”

He nods. The fact that he was able to admit this at all pleases and surprises her. The dread in her gut loosens its grip just enough for her to smile at him. She leans down so she can meet his hidden gaze. She needn’t remind herself that he wasn’t human. Clearly, he didn’t require any reminding. Kore-Sidhe can almost feel the shame radiating from him, to which there was neither reason nor purpose. She would take it from him in less than the weak beat of her own heart, if she could. She resolves to do it.

“They’re interesting! How many other shiny things have you found that you can’t fit in the bag?” she asks.

Julian shrugs, averting his eyes again.

“Tell me, please?”

“The pins in your hair,” he admits so quietly it’s barely a whispered confession. “The necklace you wear, your ring, and the pin on your cloak. The doorknobs.”

“Doorknobs, truly?” Kore chuckles and threads her fingers with his.“You would like these things, yes?”

A quick jerk of his head passes for a nod.

“You can have the jewelry, but I really do need the pins.” Kore smiles wide and unfastens the clasp of her necklace, a teardrop shaped jewel, forest green. She holds it up, illuminated by fading firelight.

“It’ll bring out your eyes.”

Next she grabs the end of her cloak to remove the pin, its looped design and fastening pin shining, too, in the glow. She places it delicately in his collection bag before holding out her little ring in the palm of her hand. It’s tiny, meant for the small sixth finger on her left hand. The black stone is vaguely heart shaped, set in bright silver. 

“I don’t think this will fit you. Shall we put it on the necklace instead?”

“Kore..I….I….” still, he can’t form the words. It isn’t that he can’t think of them, it’s that he can’t make them come out, all the words of love for her. He used to be able to say them with ease, and now he cannot.

“Julian,” she says softly and he looks up at her, eyes wide. “Do not feel this way. You’re special. You always have been. This is hardly abnormal.”

“How can you possibly say that?” 

“Because it’s true? Malak collects things, yes? Why in the world shouldn’t you? People do this, anyway. Haven’t you seen Asra’s rock collection?”

“I believe they’re minerals, my dear.” He says.

She gives him a delighted look, only a little incredulous. “Precisely. It’s because you needn’t. You can’t have my pins; I need those. But shall we look around the place for other things later?”

He nods, cheeks gone pink. A bare hint, a mere flicker of a smile turns the corners of his lips up just enough for Kore-Sidhe to notice.She loops the necklace with her ring hanging from it around his neck. The silver and green compliment his plumage as well. 

“Pretty,” she says. When she smiles her nose crinkles just a little. “Shall we find a broom? I don’t love the look--it’s scattered. And I don’t want you to get cut if you happen to step over there.”

Julian nods, the corners of his mouth turning up for the first time in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again to my fantastic, talented, ethereal beta readers: Fern and Lantur. <3 One thing I enjoy about writing fanfic is the ability you have to slip references in which your readers might recognize from other franchises, memes, books, etc. What have you found thus far? Share it with me in the comments!

**Author's Note:**

> The title “Desire Paths” refers to pathways on the ground which deviate from where one is designated to walk. This fic is an ode to that concept. I felt that the story wasn't over yet, so here I am with a return to fanfiction after many years of not writing fanfiction. 
> 
> I’m writing this for myself and a few friends but if you, the random passerby, like it as well? I’m so glad and I would love to hear your thoughts :)
> 
> A Note on Pronunciation: Kore-Sidhe is a name of my own invention coming from Greek and Celtic languages, respectively. Kore (Greek) is pronounced "Core-ayy", and "Sidhe" (Gaelic) is pronounced like "she".  
More info about my fan!apprentice (and her name) can be found @arcana-dumpsterfire via tumblr. 
> 
> Thank you to @lantur for being my beta reader. You're always an inspiration, and a truer friend was there never.


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